


a hundred mornings yet to come

by beeclaws



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Not Canon Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-29
Updated: 2016-11-29
Packaged: 2018-09-03 03:31:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8694652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beeclaws/pseuds/beeclaws
Summary: Vax and Gilmore discuss their future.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in an alternate universe where Vax and Keyleth don’t get together (for whichever reason you prefer), Vax and Gilmore never break things off and they become an official couple early on in the Chroma Conclave era. This fic is set later on in that arc – somewhere post-Feywild but pre-Vorugal.

Vax lies curled into Gilmore’s side, his head resting on his chest, hearing only soft breathing and the cold, Whitestone wind rattling the shutters. The room is filled with a grey half-light, slowly getting stronger, and Vax closes his eyes, trying to stave off the beginning of the day.

Gilmore shifts underneath him and stretches. "Time to face the day, my love,’ he mumbles into Vax’s hair."

Vax groans, screws up his face, then reluctantly rolls over to lean up on his arm. He gets a vision of Gilmore, hair down and messy, the hint of dark circles under his eyes even after a full night’s rest. He feels a familiar pang of worry. "Remind me why we have to do that, again?"

"Something to do with dragons, I imagine," Gilmore says, sitting up a little more.

"Mm. Them. Whatever would we do without dragons to take up our days?"

"Live happily with one another, I expect."

Vax smiles. "Yeah? You and me in eternal bliss?"

Gilmore laughs. "Nothing so dull, I hope," he says, then pauses, smile fading ever so slightly "Though I’d like to believe the threat of mortal peril isn’t the only thing keeping us together."

"No. Never," Vax says quickly. "But…’ He trails off. "Never mind."

He drums his fingers on the bed, looks up to find Gilmore giving him a questioning look. Vax briefly thinks of the myriad of ways he could change the topic and never have to articulate any of this before he steels himself and answers.

"I just…you’ll be back to Gilmore’s Glorious Goods, once this is done.," he says, cautiously.

"Once it’s quite finished being a pile of rubble, yes," Gilmore replies, pausing for a moment. "You do not, I assume, think me so married to my work that I would abandon you immediately."

"No. But..." Vax wishes, not for the first time, for the ability to speak his mind when frightened. "Fuck," he says, finally.

"Yes," Gilmore says, as though this is a real answer. "Go on."

"If we live," he says slowly, "we’ll…we’ll do what we’ve always done. Vox Machina. Travel the land getting ourselves into shit."

"I’d expect nothing less."

"So…"

"So?" Vax sighs, trying to search for answers in Gilmore’s face. He looks slightly inscrutable, even after all this time, but there’s a note of patience, and a fondness that still makes Vax a little dizzy.

"I mean, we’d be apart," he says finally. "Maybe more than we were together. That was always how things worked before, even if when we both lived out of Emon. I just," Vax averts his gaze, looking down at where his hands are twisting at the sheets, "you don’t think it’d get to be too much?"

Gilmore doesn’t respond for a moment, a small frown playing across his face. Even through his discomfort Vax feels a flood of warmth at how seriously Gilmore takes the things he says. Vax is blessed to have found family in many places, but this feeling of being so carefully listened to still feels like something new.

"I think that sometimes I would grow weary of it," he says, slowly. ‘Of having the meat of our lives pull us so far apart. And sometimes I would be so busy with the remainder of my life – running my many successful businesses, dealing with the string of admirers of my talents, changing the face of the arcane-’

"Yes, yes," Vax cuts in, smiling.

"That I would hardly notice at all. And sometimes," he says, reaching out take one of the hands still tugging at the sheets, running a thumb over Vax’s bruised knuckles, "you would come home. And we would remember why it was that we waited so patiently for one another."

Vax sighs, looking from their clasped hands to Gilmore’s searching face.

"But you are still not satisfied?" Gilmore asks.

"I," Vax pauses. "It would be hard."

"Yes."

"It would make you unhappy."

"Sometimes."

"How is that okay?" Vax says, almost whispering. "How could it ever be okay that I was making you feel like that, even some of the time?"

Gilmore sighs, giving Vax a look that is half sad and half unbearably fond.

"Because I would be choosing a life with you," he says, and the barely-contained reverence in his voice makes something in Vax’s chest ache, "and I think that would be enough, for me."

Vax looks into his face and grapples, for a moment, with the strange lightness spreading through him. A world where the dragons are gone, he is still him and Gilmore is still his shining self, and they stay together. Maybe for years.

Looking into the future has always felt like reaching out into the dark. Vax can imagine himself alive in ten years, or ten days, but something deep within him knows that it’s a kind of deception. It doesn’t feel true. It still doesn’t, even laying here in the growing light of their bedroom. But Vax, for all his pessimism, is weary of fear, weary of feeling his death ever-present on the horizon, even if that is the only way this ends. It would be a kindness to both of them to pretend, for a moment, that he believes, to bury himself in Gilmore’s vision of their future – sensible and dazzling all at once.

Vax leans forward, kisses Gilmore softly, slowly, then lays back down, looking up at the rafters, hands still intertwined.

"See, if everyone got you to solve their problems, half the continent would be sorted inside a week," Vax says.

Gilmore chuckles. "Flatterer," he says, one hand playing through Vax’s hair.

The day is coming in earnest now, soft light filling the room, but they remain for a while longer, stealing a few more moments of peace.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m trying to relearn how to fic after a good four years of inactivity, mostly because this ship has caught hold of me and won’t let go. So hopefully you’ll forgive any errors here – trying to remember how writing works is kind of intense.


End file.
